brainiac conspiracy

Another Unforced Error

That no one could have possibly predicted:

The Democrats declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel now. The Republicans “envision” it, perhaps at some future time, but maybe only in an episode of Sliders; they don’t say.

Sure glad we blew off our last chance to be seen as an honest broker in any Middle East peace agreement for no fucking reason whatsoever. Brilliant, Team Democrat, just brilliant.

---Vitelius

What We Talk About When We Talk About Voter Fraud

Nothing of substance, surely, but every minute we devote to it is a minute we don't devote to election fraud.

---Vitelus

Quote of The Day

ACA or no, health insurance is still too damn expensive, but it probably beats the alternative.

---Vitelius

Liberal Media Bias

A.k.a., Lies, Damned Lies, and the Laziest Fucking Journalist in Washington:

Another danger for the President: the media freak show. Stalking that circus' center ring is Matt Drudge, whose caustic website continues to help drive the news cycle with an emphasis on negative, mocking items about Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and their wives. The latest sign of Drudge's potency: Ed Klein, the author of the virulently anti-Obama book The Amateur, was barred from major TV appearances and mostly ignored by the mainstream media, but the book's prominence on Drudge's website propelled it to the No. 1 slot on the New York Times nonfiction list.

There was a reason that Klein was ignored by everyone but Drudge:

FRANKEN: OK. Ah, let's talk about the FBI files that you talk about, sort of what was called "Filegate." And you call it the "Purloined FBI Files," and you write about it on page 39.

KLEIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

FRANKEN: And later, in a Salon interview, you said, "Like Nixon, Hillary has used FBI files against her enemies."

KLEIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

FRANKEN: Now, you know that she was absolved of this by the Office of Independent Counsel.

KLEIN: Well, she may --

FRANKEN: I mean, shouldn't you have written about that? Shouldn't you have given that information to your readers?

KLEIN: It's still my -- it's still my belief and contention that Craig Livingstone was responsible for taking those files, and that he was operating under direct orders from Hillary.

CONASON: Do you know whose files those were? I mean, did you ever look at the names of the people whose files they were?

KLEIN: They were a lot of Republican activists --

CONASON: There were not, actually. They were not. Can -- name one Republican activist whose file was taken. One.

KLEIN: I couldn't do that 'cause I --

CONASON: You couldn't! 'Cause you haven't looked at the names! Did you ever look at the names?

KLEIN: No, I haven't.

CONASON: Okay. Ah, you've never looked at the names, but you know they're a lot of Republican activists. How would you know that if you've never looked at the names?

KLEIN: I've read it in The New York Times and other publications.

CONASON: Oh, no, you didn't. You did not. You did not.

FRANKEN: You know, Ed, the first --

CONASON: Because the people whose names were on that list were former White House employees. Most of them were people like gardeners and janitors and people like that. I've looked at every name on that list --

KLEIN: Former White House employees --

CONASON: That's correct.

KLEIN: in the previous Republican administration.

CONASON: Oh, no. James Carville's name was on that list!

KLEIN: Well, ah, yes, but there [inaudible] --

CONASON: Why was his name on the list?

KLEIN: Many Republican officials on that list, as well.

CONASON: There were --

KLEIN: Are you saying there weren't?

CONASON: No, I'm saying there was no, there were no Republican activists of any note on that list. If you look through that list, it's hundreds of names of people that you had never heard of and that the Republican Party had no significant connection to.

KLEIN: OK --

CONASON: And the fact is that those names were taken by mistake, which is what the Office of Independent Counsel determined, and that Mrs. Clinton never used them for any purpose. And you know what, Ed? If you'd done any reporting, you would know that, but you didn't even look at the list.

KLEIN: No, I haven't seen the list. I --

CONASON: You didn't bother to look at the list!

KLEIN: Well, I didn't look at the list because I wasn't doing a book, Joe, on the list. I was doing a -- that was one paragraph in a 300-page book, and --

CONASON: But, but --

KLEIN: -- it was a summary of what the charges, if you recall --

CONASON: But you --

KLEIN: -- were against her. What about --

FRANKEN: But you've been going on, you've been going on like, like, ah, talking in interviews saying, "Like Nixon, Hillary has used FBI files against her enemies." Now, that's a very serious charge.

KLEIN: How about the, how about the, the, um, Internal Revenue Service --

CONASON: Don't change the subject, Ed.

FRANKEN: Oh, wait a minute. I asked you -- let's address --

KLEIN: Why can't we talk about various --

FRANKEN: Because I want you to --

KLEIN: -- organs of the government?

FRANKEN: I want you to answer --

CONASON: Because he can't answer the question, that's why.

FRANKEN: Because I want you to answer one question at a time. "Like Nixon, Hillary has used FBI files against her enemies." I think that's a very, very serious charge. Would you characterize that as a serious charge?

KLEIN: I certainly would.

FRANKEN: Yeah.

KLEIN: And I would say that there are many publications who have said the exact same thing.

CONASON: Name one that has any, any, any --

KLEIN: The New York Times, for one.

FRANKEN: Said that, no, it never --

KLEIN: The Washington Post, for two.

FRANKEN: Baloney! [...]

FRANKEN:Let's, ah, let's turn to page 188 and Suha Arafat and that hug and Hillary's step-grandfather. Would you like to correct the record on that?

KLEIN: Yeah, one should have gone before the other, and that was a mistake.

FRANKEN: Okay, now, now what was the significance of that mistake, do you think?

KLEIN: Well, I think that Hillary was trying to position herself with the Jewish voters in New York. I think we can all agree on that.

FRANKEN: But what you said was --

CONASON: Unlike every other politician.

KLEIN: Yeah, yeah.

FRANKEN: Well, you said --

KLEIN: But she had a particular problem, which was that she was perceived by many Jewish voters, I think Mr. Conason even would admit to this, as not being sufficiently pro-Israeli -- pro-Israel.

FRANKEN: Well, but what you do is you try to draw a cause and effect. You say that --

KLEIN: I said that that was, in fact, a chronological mistake. She in -- discovered her grandfather, great grandfather or grandfather, step-grandfather, had been partly Jewish --

FRANKEN: Let me read --

KLEIN: And then she went to the Middle East. That's true.

FRANKEN: Let me read you what you wrote. "At the end of Mrs. Arafat's speech, Hillary applauded enthusiastically, then gave Suha Arafat a big hug and kiss."

KLEIN: Is that true?

FRANKEN: The photo -- the photo --

KLEIN: Is that true, Joe?

FRANKEN: Let me read the thing, and, and then you can respond. "The photo of the two women kissing, which played around the world, sewed serious doubts about Hillary in the mind of many Jewish voters. When Hillary realized that she had gotten herself in a jam with Jewish voters, she suddenly turned up a long lost Jewish step-grandfather-an announcement" okay, "that was dismissed by many"--

CONASON: This is such sloppy work.

FRANKEN: Well --

LANPHER: Hang on! I want--

FRANKEN: No, no. But what I'm saying --

LANPHER: -- Ed Klein to respond.

FRANKEN: Yeah, and Ed, but what I'm saying, what I'm saying is, Ed, the, the, the chronology there is there for a reason. You're saying, you're saying that she suddenly discovered this because of the hug.

KLEIN: Yeah, well, we -- this is a chronological mistake in the book, and I've admitted to it.

FRANKEN: Okay.

CONASON: Okay.

FRANKEN: Okay. How about the, ah, LAX thing? The haircut that supposedly held up traffic at LAX.

KLEIN: Mm-hmmm [affirmative].

FRANKEN: Now you know that that's not true, right?

KLEIN: No, I don't know that's not true.

CONASON: Again because you didn't do any reporting. That was, that story was debunked at the time that it came out 12 years ago. You, you, I mean it's just astonishing to me --

KLEIN: What?

CONASON: -- how little work was put into this book --

KLEIN: Well, you know --

CONASON: -- in terms of trying to establish whether any of this stuff that you've written here is true!

KLEIN: So, you're saying, Joe, that the president did not hold up traffic --

CONASON: Yeah.

KLEIN: -- at LAX?

CONASON: I'm saying that not only would I say that, but that's the established fact that's been reported after that story came out in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the FAA made it very clear that not one flight was held up as a result of that.

KLEIN: Well, Joe --

CONASON: And that was established a long time ago.

KLEIN: You and I are reading different, ah, newspapers, I think.

CONASON: No It's, it's not a matter of reading different newspapers; it's a matter of what the Federal Aviation Administration said about this incident. It was debunked at the time.

FRANKEN: Do you want to read -- do you want to hear what the, ah, St. Louis Post-Dispatch said?

KLEIN: Well, if you'd like to read it, that's -- it's your show.

FRANKEN: Well, okay. The story that -- was the planes were kept circling as President Bill Clinton had his hair clipped on Air Force One at Los Angeles Airport. This was 1993, not last month. The haircut by Beverly Hills stylist Christophe became such a metaphor for perceived White House arrogance that the president himself felt compelled to apol...ah, apologize for reported flight delays. But the reports were wrong. According to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the haircut May 18th caused no significant delays of regular scheduled passenger flights, no circling planes, no traffic jams on runways. Commuter airlines that fly routes routinely affected by the President's haircut confirmed that they had no record of delays, etc. etc. etc.

CONASON: What's peculiar to me is, you don't seem to care whether you get these things right or not.

KLEIN: What's peculiar to me, Mr. Conason, is that you're still stuck back in 1993 instead 2005. This book is --

CONASON: No, you were, you were writing about something that happened in 1993.

KLEIN: Yeah, but this book is about whether Hillary Clinton is qualified by virtue of her character --

CONASON: You mean whether you --

KLEIN: -- to be President of the United States.

LANPHER: Well, let me ask you a question, Edward Klein, and that is, when you have so many errors that accumulate, why should we take your interpretation seriously?

KLEIN: Well, but I dispute that there are so many errors accumulating.

CONASON: Well, let's ask about another one. There's a woman you name in this book named Nancy Pietrafesa--

KLEIN: Mm-hmmm [affirmative].

CONASON: Who you say was rumored to be Hillary's lesbian lover.

KLEIN: Mm-hmmm [affirmative]. That's true.

CONASON: Now there are two things about that -- well, I don't know if it's true or not.

FRANKEN: That's true, that she was rumored?

KLEIN: There were rumors, yes.

CONASON: Yeah, those are great journalistic standards. But you misspell her name throughout the book, did you know that?

KLEIN: Well, do you know that three other authors have also misspelled her name?

CONASON: Yes, I figured they must have because that's where you got it from.

KLEIN: Yeah, well, I certainly didn't get it from the three, the other two who spelt it differently than I did.

CONASON: You, you, you got it --

KLEIN: But her name appears in Gail Sheehy's book --

CONASON: Right.

KLEIN: -- on Hillary--

CONASON: On Hillary. Is that where you got it?

KLEIN: It appears in, um --

CONASON: Is that where you got it?

KLEIN: Roger Morris's book.

CONASON: Right. Is that where you got it?

KLEIN: And it also appears in David Maraniss's book.

CONASON: So you're a terrible reporter, but a good stenographer.

And he's got some pretty good company at Time also too. And to think these people wonder why they're hemorrhaging readers every year.

---Vitelius

Our Failed Liberal Media

I really used to enjoy Ezra Klein's work when he was blogging at the Prospect, but there must be something in the Post's water cooler that lowers its employees' political IQ points. I mean, this has got to be one of the stupidest bits of analysis I've read in some time:

Even if you disagree with every one of Mitt Romney’s policies, there’s a chance he’s still the best candidate to lift the economy in 2013.

That’s not because he has business experience. For all his bluster about the lessons taught by the private sector, his agenda is indistinguishable from that of career politician Paul Ryan. Nor is it because he’s demonstrated some special knowledge of what it takes to create jobs. Job growth in Massachusetts was notably slow under Romney’s tenure. It’s because if Romney is elected, Republicans won’t choose to crash the economy in 2013.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Congress gridlocks this year---if it simply gets nothing done---the economy will take a $607 billion hit in 2013 as the Bush tax cuts expire, the payroll tax cut expires and assorted spending cuts kick in. Falling off that “fiscal cliff,” they predict, will throw us back into recession.

But it’s worse even than that: Speaker John Boehner has said he wants another debt-ceiling showdown. We’re not expected to hit the debt ceiling until February or March, and so the only scenario in which the debt ceiling matters is one in which Congress has already pushed us over the fiscal cliff. So as bad as the last debt-ceiling crisis was---and Gallup’s polling showed it did more damage to consumer confidence than the fall of Lehman Bros---this one would be worse.

Miles Nadal, CEO of the marketing and communications firm MDC Partners, says that at a recent event with executives of more than 100 companies, the business leaders, panicked about this possibility, agreed on the best outcome for the economy: “a Republican landslide.” Why? “Because anything that breaks the logjam is positive,” he says. “The quality of the leader is less relevant than the ability to break gridlock.”

Jesus, where to begin.

First, we might as well agree that this is tantamount to saying that government-by-blackmail is somehow preferable to the stalemated arrangement we have now. The problem with this argument, of course, is that it fails to hold the people responsible for the stalemate, well, responsible for the problem they've created and perpetuated. The government isn't deadlocked because of some holistic dysfunction that's baked into the Constitution: It's deadlocked because one party no longer respects the legitimacy of the opposition party---which is to say, in our form of liberal democracy---and is using every parliamentary device to prevent it from acting. Any attempt to discuss breaking up institutional gridlock in Washington that fails to mention the words "unprecedented filibuster abuse" is frankly hard to take seriously as a piece of objective analysis.

In other words, if the economy craters next spring because a debt-ceiling agreement isn't reached, it won't be due to some intractable "deadlock," it will due to willful sabotage inflicted by one party against the President and his party. This really is not difficult to call out, and if all those worried businessmen want to ensure this problem doesn't play out next year, they should all be putting the screws to the GOP Congressional leadership and pressuring them to behave like grown-ups, not fretting over the existential danger of divided government. Heaven forbid we actually let the voters have the kind of government they want.

Second, I think the logical fallacy at work here is the assumption that a lot of Serious Persons in the Beltway media make about the political leadership on Capitol Hill, i.e., that when the dust settles after November, President Romney and an all-Republican Congress will come to their senses and not blow another huge hole in the deficit with tax cuts for rich people and escalations in military spending, and paying for it all by phasing out Medicare, turning Social Security into a private-equity fund, and axing entire government agencies like the EPA and the Energy Department because doing so would yield obviously disastrous outcomes. Which is to say, we should not expect Republicans to do what they say they will do because, well, at heart they're rational actors who will act rationally when they're handed the reins of power and not start needless wars, bankrupt the Treasury, turn the federal bureaucracy into a party patronage machine, and drive the American economy into the ground while blaming liberals for everything. Even though the last time (ahem) Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, they started needless wars, bankrupted the Treasury, turned the federal bureaucracy into a party patronage machine, and ran the economy into the ground while blaming liberals for everything.

Congressional Republicans have not shown an ability to govern rationally in any discernible way since 1994. Why Ezra Klein or anyone else who isn't working for Murdoch would believe for a second that they'll somehow moderate their positions after the voters hand them control of all three branches of the government---which they will interpret as a mandate for scorched-earth policy-making---is beyond my ability to explain. Anyone care to attempt an interpretation? I'm stumped.

---Vitelius

Lazy Colored People

Will basically vote for whichever party gives them the most welfare. They flocked to Republicans during Reconstruction because they got to take over whole state legislatures even though they were illiterate and unfit to govern, and they flocked to Democrats in the 1960s so they could get more food stamps and disability checks that they could spend on liquor and T-bones. They have no loyalty to anything other than their own selfish natures, and the fact that they can't see how enslaved they've become by Democrat welfare only goes to prove how preternaturally stupid and childlike they are. Offensive? Sure, but that's the subtext to this racist nonsense, and really, there's nothing more that needs to be said about it. At least it reminds me that for all the philosophical problems I'll ever have with Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats, the only viable alternatives to them are completely fucking nuts.

---Vitelius

Cancel My Reservation

It's bad enough to be one of the world's shittiest airlines, with chronic flight delays and a reputation for lost baggage (I've only lost my luggage twice in over a million miles flown over the past ten years, and these assholes were responsible both times), but to be one of the world's shittiest airlines that's run by a bunch of bigots is cause for a little Limbaugh Therapy. Spread the news and let's get our boycott on.

---Vitelius

Sure Could Use a Little ACORN Now

If things don't go too swimmingly for Team Democrat this year, they might want to reflect on what happens when you give the crazy people what they want. And then, like, stop doing it.

---Vitelius

Being Way Too Charitable

Good lengthy post by Digby today, but I'd only add that one piece of third-party analysis here badly misreads both teams' field position:

The Democrats, as far as I can see, have moved from their 40-yard-line to midfield, or their opponents' 45. As recently as the Clinton presidency, Democrats actively pushed for gun control, defence budgets under 3% of GDP, banning oil exploration off America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a public option or single-payer solution to universal health insurance, and . . . well, Clinton-era progressive income-tax rates. Today these positions have all been abandoned. And we're talking about positions held under Bill Clinton, a "third way" leader who himself moved Democratic ideology dramatically to the right, the guy responsible for "ending welfare as we know it".

This would imply that Democrats in Washington are slightly more liberal now than they were 20 years ago. I wish I could say that the adoption of health-care reform legislation that was white-papered by the Heritage Foundation; the perpetuation of regressive supply-side tax rates that reward capital and punish labor; the embrace of wholesale civil-liberties violations, including warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions, and cruel and unusual punishment (see: Manning, Bradley); the unyielding support for failed wars of aggression; endless concessions on abortion rights to a gang of religious bigots who will never be appeased; the unwillingness (refusal?) to systemically reform our broken and unjust financial system; the complete abdication on the issue of gun control; the collective failure to pass Republican environmental legislation; and the abandonment of labor whenever it's convenient have exerted a cumulative effect on the formation of a more liberal political body. But from this spot in the bleachers, it looks more around here like Team Democrat has moved the ball from its own 40 to somewhere back around its 5-yard line. Look at it this way: when you're constantly punting the ball from the back of your own end zone, it's pretty easy for your opponents to score political points against you. It's happened so frequently over the last 20 years, an entire generation of Beltway journalists has internalized this on-field dynamic into a sort-of political Natural Order of Things, where Republicans naturally play on offense and Democrats play defense, which in turn encourages Republicans to engage in ever-more-outrageous, e.g., offensive behavior and which necessitates Democrats to refute whatever nonsense the GOP is peddling during the nightly news cycle; hence our current "opinions differ" political discourse. In that sense, it's true, Democrats have "enabled" the Republicans' rightward drift, but not because they "pushed" the GOP into the realm of the crazy but because Republicans saw little if any price to be paid for acting out like crazy people. Team Democrat wasn't going to hold them accountable, and neither were the Village media. As Digby notes, the proper solution for progressives is to continue calling out the Villagers for their shoddy research; work to retake control of Team Democrat from the corporatists and accommodationists; learn to play hardball against the bullies, even if it's not ingrained in our political DNA, and reward those candidates who are good at the game. What other choice do we reasonably have?

---Vitelius

Pivoting to The Center

B-b-b-but, of course Mitt is pivoting to the center, now that's he sealed the nomination. Otherwise, we might have to remove the blinders and recognize that one of our two major political parties has been hijacked by a gang of crazy people:

In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C. club, according to attendees.

Romney, who struggled with some members of the conservative media during the Republican primary, is banking on their support in his campaign against President Barack Obama, regardless of whether they were previously in his corner or not.

The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Human Events, RedState, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier and PJ Media.

---Vitelius

Ink-Stained Guardians of Liberty

They really are, if you think about it: The members of our Fifth Estate, that is, who take best advantage of the power of a free press to hold our leaders accountable---regardless of President or party affiliation---for their many words and actions by subjecting them to the closest possible scrutiny. It's been a blessing to the Republic that they've always hewed to such lofty ethical standards.

---Vitelius

A Pox on All Their Houses

Why are so many Americans so poorly informed?

Hatch will likely survive and Lugar may, too, though his prospects seem more bleak. But the message has been sent to Republicans who are already getting threats of primary challenges from more conservative alternatives in 2014: Sens. Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

Politicians are survivalists. With rare exception, they do what it takes to survive elections.

This dynamic is hardly unique to Republicans, as much as President Barack Obama and Democrats want voters to think otherwise.

Centrist Democrats got that memo in 2010---they saw how labor almost took down Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who ended up getting crushed in November anyway.

The only thing missing here is the obligatory cri de coeur for President Bloomberg.

Honestly. This kind of reporting reduces the art of politics to a numbers game, not a policy game. Of course, if the story focused on the actual policies that the respective parties were willing to accept, and the legislative tactics each party was willing to employ to enact them, this brand of fair and balanced "both sides do it" journalism would shrivel on the vine, because, well, you know why:

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

This really isn't all that difficult to do. But it would require outfits like Politico to hire people who don't give a shit about whether or not they're on the Beltway social A-list to do their reporting for them.

---Vitelius

It Was Bound to Happen

That given the current political/media climate in our great nation, sooner or later the meme that "Watergate was a liberal media hoax" would be slowly injected into the bloodstream of our discourse by people with their own personal, financial and/or ideological axes to grind. Apparently, it starts now.

Yep, it sure does: look for more elaborations on that Commentary post in the days and weeks to come on your favorite whacknut blogsite. Trust me, by the end of next month, the butthurt brigade will be petitioning the Vatican to canonize Chuck Colson.

Look, this is not to deify Bob Woodward, but it's already widely known that there were some false leads and some factual errors in the original accounting of the cover-up, so why the attack on his Watergate credibility now?

---Vitelius

One For The MTA

I had to catch a Metro bus in L.A. last week. The paved street along Wilshire Boulevard was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was riding on one of those Magic Finger beds they used to have in low-rent hotels back in the 1970s. I traveled on the Rapid, our sorry excuse for a fast bus, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone and which was so overpacked with teeming masses of brown people, you'd think I was stuck in the middle of the developing world, not traveling from the Miracle Mile to Koreatown. When I got to the Koreatown stop, the escalator in the subway station was broken, so I needed to walk down a flight of stairs---a clear danger when you're trying to text-message your editor at the same time.

Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this. I haven’t.

My bus driver, a round-faced man with large, fleshy hands, shook his head. "Economy gets bad, more people take the bus," he noted. "Too bad we can't get more money from the government, otherwise we could run twice as many lines all day, and they'd be full up of riders."

"Our country needs a renewal," I replied.

"Ain't that the truth," my driver nodded. "Ain't gonna happen anytime soon, though. Poor Obama, he can't do it alone, what with all them fool Republicans holdin' him up."

The bus shuddered over another pothole. My cellphone dropped another call.

"But it's not just the Republicans," I interjected. "Today, neither party is talking seriously enough about the taxes that will have to be raised or the entitlement spending that will have to be cut to put us on sustainable footing. That’s why we need an independent Presidential candidate---like straight-talking, socially moderate and fiscally conservative Mike Bloomberg---who could challenge both candidates by speaking honestly about what we need to restore the foundations of our global leadership before we implode."

My driver laughed. "What do you mean we, white man? Who ya spoofin'? You wanna fix Washington? Get rid of all the muthafuckin' crazy people."

I got off the bus at Fairfax. The traffic signal at the intersection was out, traffic was snarled in all four directions, and a homeless man on the corner asked me for money. My mind rushed back to that conversation on the bus, and of our country's urgent need for entitlement reform.

---Vitelius

He's Seeking the Center

Just like the serious persons said he would all along. Can't imagine what he'd sound like if he, you know, ever tracked to the right.

I mean, do you really have to read any further than

Speaking to Larry O'Connor on Breitbart TV . . .

To get an idea where his party's ideological center is these days?

But I digress. Within 24 hours I'll bet a cup of Java to anyone who reads this that I can summon, somewhere, a fresh piece of news-analysis from a leading American news publication asking when, oh when, will the Real Romney grace us with an appearance. We're going to be bombarded by them from now through the GOP convention.

---Vitelius

Also Too, Greedy Little Sadists

The Juice Master wonders:

Why our elites and media elites have such sheer contempt and hatred for social security. It’s there for everyone! It’s a solid government program which gives everyone the peace of mind that no matter what, there will be some money available for you to take care of yourself in your most vulnerable years. It’s such a miniscule portion of the taxes we pay, and for the ultra-rich screamers who hate social security the most, it’s a negligible portion of their income, and it’s capped! It’s not money wasted on fraud and abuse, it’s extremely efficient with the kind of overhead any charity or organization in the world would die to achieve, and it’s just an amazing program.

What I'll never understand is how such a selfish and punitive proposal that sprang from a small clique of rich and well-connected businessmen and which relied on the discredited arguments of a pair of hack economists, became accepted as an emblem of civic-minded virtue. And the sad truth is, the Liberty Leaguers, the Hayekian cranks and their think-tank/media progeny been gradually winning the war of ideas, in tiny and barely discernible increments, for over 70 years now, and truth to tell, they're still winning the battle now. How do we know this? Every time you hear someone who's smart enough to know better remind us of the urgent need to embark upon "entitlement reform," that's another notch on their bedpost.

Of course it doesn't help that appealing to Americans' basest and shabbiest instincts has a proven track record of political success.

How to fix? Honestly, I have no idea anymore. I'm almost of the mind that we will need to repeat the meltdown of 1929-33, with 25-percent unemployment and rural America reduced to an uninhabitable desert all over again, to remind people---and Red Staters in particular---about (a) why programs like Social Security were started in the first pace, and (b) the wisdom in preserving them and keeping them fully funded, even if it means raising lots of taxes on rich people to do it. And who knows, that may very well happen, depending on whose forecasts you believe. But given the current ideological divide that exists in the Village in our time, where a Democratic President governs to the right of Richard Nixon and his Republican opponents govern to the right of Francisco Franco, it's hard to see where the light of common sense---let alone the the light of history---ever seeps into the chambers of a ruling class that has become hardwired over a generation or so to judge every government social-welfare program by the rules of market pricing and return-on-investment. About the best we can do for now is keep stalling for time until a new generation of Better Democrats can be groomed and recruited for service. But it's going to take some time either way, and we are slowly running out of it.

---Vitelius

Re-Frame the Messaging Wars

Sure, we could try to do that in our favor. Or we could simply point out the obvious., i.e., that so-called "swing voters" only exist in the minds of Washington pundits and policy analysts, most of whom make comfortable livings and who don't want their taxes raised, as a vehicle for peddling self-serving economic talking points sans embarrassing Teabilly ideological baggage. In which case the Village Amway salesmen should not be engaged but ignored, with progressives now free to campaign for policies based on principles they actually believe in. Why hasn't anyone thought of that before?

Put another way: trying to win the messaging wars with a gang of charlatans is a waste of time. Better idea: Call them out for the greedy little shits that they are, then take your case to the voters. You might discover you can win elections this way.

---Vitelius

Misplaced Wrath

Get over it, kids. They're not going to fire this guy. Are you kidding, if he brings a few hundred thousand extra page views on the drawing power of his name, they'll give him a bump up in pay. Regardless, why would they ever get rid of him? National Review has been trafficking in white-supremacist apologias for decades:

The central question that emerges---and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal---is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes---the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.

So Bill Buckley had more refined erudition and forensic skills than Derbyshire does. Otherwise, their differences in philosophy vary only by degree. The Big Bad Boogity Negro has been one of the symbolic prime movers of conservative political thought since the 1950s---the others being Baby Jesus and, most lately, Dagny Taggart---so now that their dirty little secret is out of the bag, let's take the debate to the voters.

Update: I stand corrected. They must really be feeling some heat for them to be doing this. Doubling down on the crazy-talk is their usual default response.

---Vitelius

Why Have Elections, Anyway

When you let the losers dictate policy?

In the midst of the bitter 2009 battle to pass a law to provide health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, the United States Preventive Services Task Force announced in November that most women should not get routine mammograms until age 50 because the risks of the X-ray screens and surgical biopsies that often follow outweighed the benefits in younger women.

Although the task force did not consider cost in its analysis, Republicans charged that its recommendation was the start of health care rationing, an accusation given prominent play on Fox News.

“That scared the bejesus out of everybody,” a top F.D.A. official said.

The Obama administration became extremely risk averse, fearing further controversies might jeopardize the passage of health care reform, agency and administration officials said. It refused many interview requests for agency officials and scientists until the health law passed.

“To the career people, that was disappointing,” a top F.D.A. official said. “Employees here waited eight long years for deliverance that didn’t come.”

A provision of the new law required chain restaurants and “similar retail food establishments” to post calorie counts on menus, a provision championed by consumer advocates and the restaurant industry, which favored standardized rules over a hodgepodge of state and local ones.

The F.D.A.’s first draft of the guidelines---approved by the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House---stated that movie theaters, lunch wagons, trains and airlines would be included. A report about the proposal in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 31, 2010, nevertheless caught the White House by surprise.

“This was the era of Glenn Beck, and the White House was terrified that Beck would get up and say this is all part of the nanny state,” a senior F.D.A. official said.

In politics, I think that's called pissing away your mandate. And boy, did this administration find every possible way to do it during their first two years in office.

I really, truly hope that the President's newfound progressive-populist voter pitch is sincere, that he's finally seen the folly of trying to placate these people and is willing to govern going forward without their participation, and that he's not simply mouthing a cynical appeal to his liberal base to stay the course until election day. I'll vote for him, obviously, since there's no palatable alternative out there, but on the larger question of motive, I think the jury is still out.

---Vitelius

Your Liberal Media

Apparently some of them still do not understand that most Americans still get their energy far cheaper than most other developed nations do, that our current rates of consumption are not sustainable, and that one of the easiest and most efficient ways to reduce our rates of energy consumption is to make the price of energy, well, more expensive via fuel/carbon taxes. There is nothing really controversial about any of this, and just because Team Republican says it is does not make it so, dumbshit.

Also too, habitual liars:

Romney is also off base with his claim about Obama’s prediction that energy prices would “skyrocket” under his policies, and that we are seeing the fruition of that now at the gasoline pump. Obama’s “skyrocket” quote was part of a discussion about cap-and-trade as a means to reduce greenhouse gases.

There’s no question that curbing greenhouse gas emissions would bring about higher energy prices. Obama, speaking to the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle on Jan. 17, 2008, said electricity costs (not gasoline prices) would “necessarily skyrocket” as a result of capping emissions levels, and that his job as president would be to convince the public and Congress that benefits outweigh costs. “If we can’t make that argument persuasively enough, you can be Lyndon Johnson, you can be the master of Washington, you’re not going to get that done.”

On June 26, 2009, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade bill, by a vote of 219-212. The bill included allowances to electric companies to protect consumers from increases in electricity bills. But the bill died in the Senate. And so, of course, it couldn’t have driven up gasoline prices. Romney has lifted Obama’s quote out of context and applied it to a wholly different topic, gasoline prices.

B-b-b-b-ut, calling Mitt Romney a habitual liar would not be fair and balanced! It would be, like, true, but that's not the purview of Beltway journalism, now, is it.

---Vitelius